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Report helps St. Francis meet community health needs

A seventy-seven page IRS-mandated report on community healthcare could be viewed as a necessary annoyance by some, but Eve Van Sickle views the requirement as an opportunity to address the needs of northeast Louisiana.

A seventy-seven page IRS-mandated report on community healthcare could be viewed as a necessary annoyance by some, but Eve Van Sickle views the requirement as an opportunity to address the needs of northeast Louisiana.

Van Sickle, the vice-president of mission integration at St. Francis Medical Center, said every non-profit hospital must complete a community health needs assessment every three years in order to maintain their tax-exempt status.

The report zeroes in on primary health needs in northeast Louisiana and culminates in the implementation of a three-year plan to address three issues identified as major healthcare problems faced in the community.

"If you think about that, obesity, heart attack, stroke and chronic disease management are all intertwined," Van Sickle said, "and that is what was interesting with this HCI (Health Communities Initiative) data. You could see the commonality, you could see the threads connecting all of these situations together."

For this report, the second St. Francis has generated using IRS guidelines, the health system subscribed to the HCI system for data collection.

"It's a huge database that pulls public reported data into a central, easily accessible database," Van Sickle said. "It pulls it all together and then Rebecca (Mixon) sent out a survey to community leaders, agencies, business leaders and team members to get the public opinion."

The three focus areas are where the greatest amount of work still needs to take place in order for the service to see a positive impact, the assessment states. It also highlights these were the areas most frequently mentioned by survey respondents and community partners.

"The three areas have a noteworthy influence on the vulnerable populations of this region, and they are the areas that, if brought under control, could have a deeper, more lasting impact on the people affected," the report reads.

An implementation plan targeting these issues should go before the hospital board for approval in August, Van Sickle said. Strategies developed to address any one are expected to have a spillover effect on others. For example, obesity is a major factor in the other target areas.

"Obesity automatically increases your chance of heart attack stroke, and that in turn becomes a chronic disease issue," Van Sickle said. "If you have any kind of chronic condition, and you are also obese and have a sedentary lifestyle...They are all kind of intertwined so we really felt those ranked the highest and they are also the things, if we could impact them in any way, it would have a definite positive impact on the community."

Van Sickle said many of the other areas identified as needs in the community, such as substance abuse, elder care and mental health, were highlighted in the report alongside the local agencies focused on those filling those needs.

"There is a reference document here for anyone who is looking for services in this community," Van Sickle said. "We listed 11 needs when we sent out our survey. If you’ve identified that need, you have to say why you are not going to address it and we have our reason for all of those. One of the biggest reasons is because there is someone in the community already doing that. We should be focusing on things we can impact and that aren’t being addressed. This document, which is available on our website, has a huge resource list. We aren’t addressing mental health, but you can go to that document and find out who is addressing mental health if you’re looking for those services."

Over the next three years, she expects St. Francis to refer back to the document often while examining services and community needs.

"It takes a lot of money, and a lot of time to do this," Van Sickle said, "but I think it's a great benefit."